1 Concert Old!

It is with much joyful trepidation that I annouce that today is Musings on Everything’s first birthday! Well, in a matter of speaking. I started the blog, as you may or may not remember, just after I  came home from the Fall Concert earlier this year. So, in the spirit of that, and to maintain ties to the music department and concerts in general since I will no longer be participating in them, I’ve decided to start counting the age of this blog in concerts, rather than posts or years or comments or some such triteness as that.

So here’s to Musings on Everything’s first concert! Hopefully, I’ll find the time to get this thing to its second ;)

It Never Stops! (AAAAAHHHH!)

Yeah, so, I am so ridiculously sorry, but I can’t even find the time to begin writing a post right now. Too many tests, too little time. Anyway, I promise I’ll make up for it after May 14. Till then, ta!

Why does school have to be like this?

So, however much I wish I could bore you all to tears with yet another ramble on a random topic, I can’t this week because I simply have no time at all to actually finish one and make it coherent.

 

You’re welcome.

 

Enjoy the AP cramming guys, and while I can’t make any promises whatsoever, I will try my hardest to have one up on Friday. Seriously. Nag me about it or something.

On Time Travel

Hey, guys, quick question: If you had a time machine, what would you do with it?

I mean, would you go back and prevent your parents from meeting each other?

Would you try to change the world, maybe kill Hitler?

Or would you goof off, be in two places at once, literally fuck things up royally on purpose for your own amusement?

Personally, I would do something far more interesting. Like perhaps take a full HD camera crew, sound mixers, a self-contained production studio in a trailer park with generators, basically, go back in time and film everything. At least everything important. The guy who invented the wheel inventing the wheel. The first human in Africa. (Do you know how many arguments that would resolve? I mean, the entire science of anthropology would go kaboom because we’d answer al the questions they’d been trying to find answers for. And then captured those answers. On film. Digital HD film, which is the best kind.) Shakespeare’s first performance in the Globe theater. The coronation of Louis XIV. All of WWI and WWII. (In HD? You know you’d watch that.) What else? Steve Jobs and Woz building the first Mac, in their garage. The Battle of Hastings. Vietnam. Genghis Khan taking over most of Asia and then getting his ass kicked by Mulan. Ancient Egypt. The rise of Rome (that would be a History channel special in an instant). Perhaps a documentary on the dodo with real footage of the dodos. George Washington crossing the Delaware. There is just so much interesting stuff out there in the annals of history.

Think about it! The ability to see, for yourself, in true-to-form glorious HD, just how short the Sun King was, and why, exactly, he needed to build Versailles to compensate for it. We could plant cameras in the Apollo 13 command module and watch that epic tale unfold.

I, personally, think that would be the most awesome use of time travel technology in the history of ever. Imagine… hundreds of thousands of hours of footage of real-live historical events! No more arguments amongst conspiracy nutjobs as to whether there was a second gunman involved in JFK’s assassination! No more heated debates around whether George Washington had wooden teeth! No more having to read textbooks that try to provide half-assed “alternate versions” of events just so that they won’t get sued for brainwashing! There’d only be one version of history!

Ah, what a wonderful future.

 

 

Oh, and for those of you who say (or even thought for a a second) that we should be going forward and getting stock numbers: don’t be stupid. That’s still insider trading, as you still have insider information. It’s just from the future. *shakes head* Idiots.

Wow…

Would you look at that. I haven’t posted a single thing in a looooong time. Hrmph. This is what comes from being on spring break and freedom and discovering Twitter all over again and all that, I suppose. Rest assured I do have a few things up my sleeve, and what I think is a rather interesting idea kicking around. You guys probably won’t think so, but whatever. Enjoy whatever’s left of your break guys, I’ll see you around the bend.

On Twitter

I’m sure that by now, the more observant of you will have noticed the new sidebar feature. It’s my Twitter stream, updated on page refreshes with whatever it is I’m saying ATM.

Twitter is a method to communicate to anyone and everyone in short, 140-character bursts of information. You can “tweet” about anything from your dinner to the latest zany antic of your cat/dog/kangaroo/other pet of your choosing.

Or you could even use it for the stated purpose, which would be to tell the world “what you are doing”. I know a guy who uses it for that. He’s very boring.

Anyway, back to business. In the past month or so I’ve been an active user of Twitter, I’ve managed to get a pretty good handle on the reasons people are addicted to it, mainly by going and getting addicted to it along with them. ‘Course, you have to have people following you in order for Twitter to be of any use whatsoever.

First things first: You need to find some people to follow. Whether it be John Hodgman or Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore or Shaquille O’Neal, Rainn Wilson or Jimmy Fallon, Heidi Montag or Weird Al, Stephen Colbert or Jerry Trainor, Kevin Rose or Marina Orlova, Wil Harris or Dr. Horrible, LeVar Burton or Wil Wheaton, Stephen Fry or John Cleese, Ryan Seacrest or Britney Spears, Lance Armstrong or Darth Vader, Adam Savage or MC Hammer, there are a gazillion celebrities out there for you to interact with.

And for the preteen/female crowd, you can follow Taylor Swift, the girl from Twilight, Selena Gomez, Miley Cyrus, or whoever else you can dig up. I think one or more of the Jonas Brothers has a Twitter as well, not sure. These are just who I can remember offhand.

There are also people who are not famous on Twitter, of course. I’m not going to give you any suggestions there, except to follow myself, @thatthingyoudo, @anarchyxcrayons and @violabeatle. You probably know us. But in the end, you need to find your own group of people and start following, and (most importantly) interacting with them. Because in the end, Twitter is just another place to find friends on the internets. And that’s what makes it so cool. Because if you combine celebrities and direct contact, you can have a conversation with Stephen Fry. And Shaq. The Shaq. Even though he’s in Chicago and you’re in your chair.

And that’s just reason one. Reason two: everybody’s an exhibitionist. It’s just the vast majority of the world doesn’t know it yet. And that’s all I have to say on this topic, because reason three is the big one:

Twitter works almost like how real life works. On places like Facebook, you need the mutual friending thing in order to be in communication with that person on the Facebook platform. While this is a good idea for privacy, it’s not really how conversations work. Think about it for a second, using the analogy of asking somebody you don’t really know that well what the homework is. Doesn’t matter which class. You just know that both of you take it.

Facebook method:

You: Hey. Can you be my friend so that we can talk?

Them: Yes. I have accepted you as my friend.

You: Yay. I now have access to every detail of your life.

Them: Yes, you do.

You: What was the homework?

Them: We didn’t have any.

You: Oh.

You see, not only is this method long and cumbersome, it’s needlessly compromising. All those extra steps on Facebook are replaced on Twitter with this exchange:

You: @them what was the hw?

Them: @you we didn’t have any

That’s it. You don’t even have to be following them. Easy in, easy out. The fluidity of Twitter mimics real life and allows for more natural, flowing interactions. It’s just as easy to hold a conversation: just keep @replying to each other.

Another great feature of Twitter is its simplicity. All you need to do is sign up, follow some people and start twittering. It doesn’t try to be everything under the sun. Twitter does one job and does it well.

And it’s a combination of all these aspects that has so drawn me in. With Twitter, it’s like stream-of-consciousness, only not a book and a little bit more condensed. I suggest you all try it out. Who knows? Maybe you’ll like it.